Pierre Agostini
active c. 1941, Tunis, French Tunisia
French-American physicist who performed the first attosecond light-pulse measurement via the RABBIT technique.
Agostini worked at CEA Saclay before moving to Ohio State. In 2001 his group demonstrated a train of attosecond pulses (250 as bursts) from high-harmonic generation using 'Reconstruction of Attosecond Beating By Interference of Two-photon Transitions' (RABBIT) — the first 'photographs' of electrons inside atoms.
Nobel-winning work
Agostini's RABBIT (2001) measures attosecond pulse duration and phase: overlapping high harmonics with an infrared laser creates 'sidebands' in the photoelectron spectrum whose intensity encodes timing. The technique opened attosecond science — watching electrons leave or bond within molecules on the 10^-18 s scale.
Workplaces: CEA Saclay, Ohio State University
France, United States